go-short

go-short is a simple URL shortener for personal usage. It starts an HTTP server and redirects shortened URLs to their associated normal URL.

Table of contents

1. Installation
2. Configuration
3. Usage
4. Development

Installation

To install go-short download the binary from here. You can start the server with ./go-short server. In the resources/ folder there is a sample systemd unit file if you want to start it through systemd.

In case you want the server to listen on a privileged port you should set the special capabilities for the binary file.

setcap 'cap_net_bind_service=+ep' /usr/local/go-short/go-short

authbind won't work as the binary is statically linked.

Docker

You can also run go-short server in a Docker container instead of running it directly in your host. Follow the instructions on Docker Hub.

Configuration

Both the server and the client will look for a configuration file in $HOME/.go-short/go-short.yml Configuration is the following

go-short:
  # application logging level
  log-level: info
  state-store:
   # path where go-short will save its state
   path: /home/antonis/.go-short/state_store
   # How often will we perfom GC on the state store
   gc-interval: 2h
  webserver:
   # IP the HTTP server will listen to
   listen: 127.0.0.1
   # port the server will listen to
   port: 80

You will also need to change /etc/hosts so that go (or anything else) domain name will resolve to localhost. It should look like the following:

127.0.0.1	localhost go

Usage

There two main commands, server which will start the server and client which performs operations on the server such as add, delete and list. server mode does not take any other arguments. client has the following sub-commands:

./go-short client
  -file string
	    Path to CSV file key,URL
  -key string
	    Shortened URL key
  -op string
	    Operation (add | delete | list | add-batch) (default "add")
  -url string
	    URL

• To add a new short URL type ./go-short client -key gs -url https://github.com/kouzant/go-short
• To list all shortened URLs type ./go-short client -op list or use the web UI shown below
• To delete a URL type ./go-short client -op delete -key gs
• To add batch entries from a CSV file type ./go-short client -op add-batch -file FILE_PATH

After you've added a short URL, go to your browser and type go/gs. It will redirect you to https://github.com/kouzant/go-short

You can also list the shortened URLs in a nicer(?) way by visiting go/_admin

Development

go-short is written in Go 1.13 and is using Badger as a persistent state store. To run all the tests execute go test ./... or if you want the tests of a specific package e.g. go test github.com/kouzant/go-short/storage

To buld it run go build

To build the Docker image run docker build -t kouzan/go-short:VERSION -f resources/Dockerfile .